


Part Two: The Sea

by Apetslife



Series: John Silver Can't Get There From Here [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: But No Lash, First Time, Flint/The Sea, M/M, Piracy, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rum, This John Silver Is Not A Bristol Tavernkeeper, bad language, sodomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 15:28:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10128323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apetslife/pseuds/Apetslife
Summary: Or:  How The Ocean Helps James Flint Get His Groove Back“Maybe it’s pirates,” Silver calls to him from his perch amidships, not even bothering to move from his custom spot with its handholds and braces and perfect view both fore and aft.  James can see the wicked edge to his grin even from his place on the foredeck.  “That’ll make things lively.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, I finished this in something of a rush tonight after seeing 4x06, because I needed something un-horrible in my life. And then AO3 was completely FUBAR when posting to a series, so it wouldn't post, and I'm having to throw it up as a standalone; part one is here: [The Land](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10009145). It makes reference to canon so far, but this whole series is basically a wildly optimistic canon fix-it extending out from now. I hope you like it.

Ten days out from Tortuga, and running three days ahead of schedule already, it’s a cool, bright day on the open water when the call of “sail, sail!” goes out from the crow’s nest. James has to firmly quell the instant leap of his pulse, the rush of adrenaline that sets his fingers to tingling and widens his eyes.

The habits and patterns of ten years are not, after all, discarded on a whim.

“Maybe it’s pirates,” Silver calls to him from his perch amidships, not even bothering to move from his custom spot with its handholds and braces and perfect view both fore and aft. James can see the wicked edge to his grin even from his place on the foredeck. “That’ll make things lively.”

“One would hope that any pirate would have better fucking sense,” Flint grumbles, and catches the glass Silver tosses to him as he reaches his side. Extending it out and finding the horizon, he begins the familiar sweep for spots of white against the blue.

“They’d be in for quite a shock,” Silver agrees comfortably, propping a shoulder against the mizzen. Around them, the crew keep moving, the steady pulse of a ship at sea that never really rests, but Flint can feel the eyes and attention on them both.

He finds the sails.

“It’s the _Vainglorious_ ,” he says, loudly enough for word to be heard and passed. “Friends. Well, of a sort.” He lowers the glass and glances sideways at Silver, and has to pause.

Gone are the heavy coats with their braided frogging and fancy embroidery. Silver’s in his old cotton shirt, open at the collar, and the sun and wind have turned his throat and face brown and warm with health. Gone too is the severe hairstyle he’d favored on land, and instead his hair is clubbed back in a simple queue. Almost like a gentleman, Flint muses, if not for the wind blowing curls of it everywhere out of place. He hasn’t shaved in a few days. So much of the harsh, brittle edge that had formed on him during the birth of Long John Silver has sloughed away, with the trappings and the name. He smiles more. That ridiculous, annoying, exasperating grin is back. James isn’t sorry.

Silver’s looking at him with one brow raised curiously, and he just shakes his head. 

“Let’s go say hello to Jack and Anne, shall we?”

“I still can’t believe they named our fucking warship after Charles Vane,” Silver answers, which is close enough to agreement. 

“Mr. DeGroot! Come about, fifteen degrees East-Nor’east,” Flint bellows, “and get the mainsails out if you please. We’ll let her stretch her legs a little.”

“Aye,” DeGroot stomps past, only pausing long enough to give them both a sour look. It’s his default, so Flint just waits. “Rig the t’gallants, Captain? We haven’t run her in full canvas, yet.”

“I think that’s a marvelous idea, Mr. DeGroot. See to it,” Flint grins, and Silver’s shaking his head even as the orders go out, shouted down the ship, and men scramble into the rigging like the soulless heathen monkeys that they are.

“What?” Flint demands, turning back to the view of the sea, Silver still at his shoulder. “It’s important to test a ship under good conditions, get the feel of her and her quirks, before facing a storm or a crisis.”

“Oh, of course,” Silver agrees, grinning. “It has nothing to do with sailing circles around Jack Rackham.”

“Nothing whatsoever,” Flint says firmly, and Silver laughs and laughs.

*

“I knew it was you, you fancy shit,” Rackham hollers over from his raised quarterdeck, hanging over the rail like a midshipman on his first berth, “that last tack into the wind was too absurd to be anyone else. What the fuck are you doing out here?”

“Thought we’d stop in and say hello,” Flint calls back, grinning, the warm feeling of acknowledgement curling through him. He glances over to see the ropes cascade down from the _Vainglorious_ to his much lower deck, binding the two ships together. Already men are lining up to cross, shouting to friends on the opposite side, waving items to trade, and at least one of his, he knows, will want to see Howell for an infected scratch. “Come on down, if you like, I’ll give you a tour.”

Jack’s eyes go wide and startled as his feet hit the deck and he sees Silver lounging comfortably by the great wheel. 

“Nassau?” He raps out urgently as he spins, and really, Flint would despair of his contextual awareness if they all hadn’t been through such hell, and so recently.

“Is fine,” Silver assures him. “Humming along nicely under the watchful eye of the Captain’s Council. I didn’t like being king, so I quit.”

Jack’s jaw drops, and he stares at Silver. Flint hides his grin. 

“There IS a governing seat open on the council, though, for you and Anne, if should ever decide you want it,” Silver continues, ignoring Jack’s unattractive gaping with aplomb. “It’s all nice and official, set down in my abdication.”

“Your _abdication_ ,” Jack squeaks, and Flint takes pity and claps him on the shoulder. 

“Come on, have a drink. We’ll explain it all, I promise, it does make sense.”

“The kind of crazy sense you two bastards make is not the sense the rest of us use,” Jack mourns, but allows himself to be led to the Captain’s cabin, and ushered into a chair, and poured a glass of rum. The windows are all thrown open, the cool sea air blowing the sounds of the two ships in to them, the shouts and calls and creaks and the ever-present shushing of the sea. 

“Humor me for a moment,” Silver begins, and his voice is taking on that silken storytelling tone that Flint has learned to both love and fear. From the look Jack shoots him, he feels the same, but lets him continue uninterrupted. “And imagine, if you will, this man,” he points at Flint, “attempting to retire to a quiet life of peace and reflection. This man, who took control of three straggling companies of defeated British troops, a revolting slave army, and a muster of pirates, and without a single dissenting voice or word of challenge, had them all fall into order behind him as a unified army.”

Flint’s ears are feeling hot and red, and he stares into his cup, cursing his complexion for what must be the millionth time this year. He can feel both Silver and Jack staring thoughtfully at him.

“This man,” Silver goes on relentlessly, “who then worked out a plan of battle, whipped the lot of them into fighting discipline in three days, and commanded that army to defeat an entire Spanish armada, manned with Spanish regulars. Who routed a full invasion by an empire, simply through force of will and tactical genius.”

“Yes, yes,” Jack breaks in, waving his glass. “I’m sure there is a Navy man somewhere in Britain who wakes in cold screaming sweats each night, thinking of what he’s lost the King with the banishment of such a military mind. I get it. What does that have to do with all of this?”

Flint can’t look up. He knows his entire face must be a picture, by now. Give him a battle or a challenge, a fight, something to fling himself against and conquer, and everything is clear, sharp as crystal, each move and step as obvious to him as if laid out on a map. Social interactions like this, however? Muddied and mixed and treacherous, always. He can tell that there’s laughter in Silver’s voice when he answers, though.

“Well, someone has to keep him from just...accidentally taking over the world. And besides, I can’t let Captain Flint take to the high seas without his quartermaster. What kind of friend would I be?”

Jack snorts. “That’s big of you. The world, I’m sure, is _most_ grateful. But you cannot imagine that our exploits this last year have gone unremarked in the larger world. What sort of reaction do you think news of Captain Flint and Long John Silver sailing again under the black will provoke in Whitehall, in Madrid, and beyond?”

“We’re not flying the black.” Flint can answer that one definitively. “The _Penelope_ will run blockades, courier errands, and some protection details I imagine. With eighteen guns and the bow and stern chasers, we’ve enough firepower to handle that easily enough. And for all official communications, her captain is Jack Silver.” He glances over at Silver, a small smile pulling at a corner of his mouth. “Long John Silver being the stuff of myth and legend has its benefits. So far no one at any port of call has put them together, so it’s worked out.”

Jack appears to have moved beyond amazement and into blank acceptance. “You’re not flying the black,” he confirms, as if to himself, and Flint waits him out patiently. When Jack finally looks back and meets his gaze, he’s frowning a little. “Then how the fuck are you paying for all this?”

Flint takes a long drink of his own rum, sits back in his chair, and looks at Jack through half-lidded eyes. “For ten years, I was the most feared pirate in the Bahamas, perhaps in the whole Caribbean. Fat prizes, heavy purses. You don’t suppose that I pissed all that away on rum, wagers, and women, do you?”

“I was imagining more guns, revolutions, and men, but yes!” Jack exclaims, and then freezes, along with everything else in the cabin. The moment draws out, sticky with tension, even the air seeming to pause in its movement. And then Silver slaps his own hand over his eyes, and the sound releases the frozen tableau with something like a sigh.

“Well, I didn’t,” Flint grits out, and thumps his suddenly empty mug back onto his desk, followed with his best glare. 

“Anyway,” Silver slides smoothly into the conversation, with a bright smile and a hand on Flint’s shoulder. “Our men are on regular wages, but we’re running the ship as if we were all on the account. Votes, shares, and every man with a say. It’s in the nature of an experiment, you see.”

“And they’re fine with walking away from prizes?” Jack’s flustered nerves are well-recovered, Flint must admit. “No more adventuring? No great battles to be fought and won and told of in the stories?”

“Many of our men took injuries this last year,” Flint answers. “Some have lost their taste for war. Some have matelots on board with them, and prefer not to follow them into possible death. Some are simply ready for a steadier life, for now. And who’s to say a bit of privateering might not come our way?”

“Flint,” Silver warns, but it’s all for show. 

“With this little thing?” Jack makes a show of looking around. “Two decks, two masts, eighteen guns, and forty men?”

“And a turn of speed that you won’t see in that fucking warship in a high seas gale,” Flint bares his teeth at Jack, in a friendly way, of course.

“No offense intended,” Jack hastily adds, hands raised, and Silver chuckles. 

“Leave the _Penelope_ to us, Jack, and tell us what’s been going on out in the world, will you?”

Flint pours them all more rum, and settles in for the gossip.

*

A sharp whistle signals all grapples away, and Flint glances to where Silver is waving broadly to Anne, her hair marking her bright and bold on the deck of the ship opposite them. He plants his feet firmly on his own deck, letting the flow and sway of the ship move up through his feet and knees and hips and spine as the first surge of wind fills her sails, pressing her forward in a great bound that runs like rum through his veins, making his heart pound deep and heavy with the heady beauty of it. The mainsails snap and boom as they fill taut, the masts creak and pop as they flex and bend to the weight of it, and the song of the ship resumes its gorgeous, wild chorus.

“I’ve lived in two orphanages, a church school, served in one army and on three merchant ships, and still I’ve never met such gossips as pirates,” says Silver at his shoulder, Silver who never met a moment he couldn’t ruin. Flint can’t quite bring himself to mind, though, not when the _Penelope_ is still singing to him and the freshening wind is lifting them out over the white-capped waters. 

“In my experience, the British Navy is very nearly as bad,” Flint answers distractedly, eyes on a loose guy-rope that’s been bothering him up near the foremast topsail. “It’s a bit more circumspect, though, since the lash is always waiting in the wings if words fall on the wrong ears.”

“Did _you_ know that half the pirate fleet has us married already? In complete contradiction of the fact that I already have a wife?” Silver demands, hands on his hips as he sways with the ship, and Flint feels a huge, unnamed fondness swell inside him, looking at this man with his sulking face, his ridiculous hair half-fallen out of its queue, his quicksilver mind and his one leg and his gorgeous, sturdy steadfastness. 

“No,” he admits, a smile curling his mouth. “But then, I’m far too terrifying these days to gossip with. I only hear what’s passed on when I’m with you.”

Silver snorts. “Terrifying. Hah. They’ve never seen you try to shave that tricky bit under your chin, I’ll wager. All fear and respect would disappear in a heartbeat, and then where would we be?”

“Nowhere good, I expect,” Flint’s grin widens, and he waves to DeGroot. “Mister DeGroot, I leave the ship in your capable hands until seven bells. Do you have her?”

“I do, sir,” the Ship’s Master calls back, and Flint tips his head back towards the cabin. 

“Come on, then. Jack sent over a meat pie and some apples. We’d best eat before these sea-wolves get to it,” which earns him a chuckle from the men coiling rope at the rail, as he walks behind Silver stumping his way again into the small, low captain’s quarters. 

“I wonder what they’d say if they knew you wouldn’t so much as kiss me properly,” and now there’s an actual edge to Silver’s bitching, even as he settles himself into his customary chair. His high cheekbones are flushed red with rum under his tan, and he won’t meet Flint’s eyes as he pulls an apple out of the bowl and bites into it viciously. “Some marriage this would be.”

“Don’t,” Flint warns, low and serious, pausing as he shucks off his jacket. 

“Don’t what?” Silver lifts his chin and stares at him defiantly, his eyes catching the last light of the day and turning clear as blue water, or glass. Flint can’t look away. “Don’t voice my very reasonable objections to your ridiculous stubbornness, which you won’t even do me the courtesy of explaining?”

“You do not want to push me on this,” Flint growls, stepping closer, anger rumbling through him like the first warnings of a distant storm.

“Oh, I think I do,” Silver smirks at him, all teeth and insincerity. “Madi’s given her enthusiastic blessing. I’ve made every allowance for your tragic past and your current issues, whatever they may be. But this is becoming ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous. Really.” Flint looms over him, and Silver refuses to do him the courtesy of looking even the smallest bit intimidated. Still, he soldiers on. The anger is tangling with something that feels like panic, now, and he knows that combination, knows it drives him to lash out like an animal at anyone close, but he cannot stop himself. “I once called you the most dangerous man I’d ever met, and you immediately set about proving me right. Perhaps I’ve simply reconsidered the wisdom of becoming...involved..with someone like that.”

“Don’t you lie to me, James Flint.” Silver pushes up out of his chair with an echo of his old grace, his voice a level, slow demand, deadly serious. “I knew your mind as well as you did within a month of meeting you. I could read your motivations before you even knew them, at times. And you think to tell me you do not _want_ me? Don't insult either of us.”

They’re far too close, the panic is singing to Flint in warning. Far too close. He should move away. But the rum and this beautiful ship, the day, and Silver, are conspiring against him, because he cannot bring himself to shift. 

“Can we not keep things as they are?” He hates that there is very nearly a tremble in his voice under the plea, and prays against hope that Silver will not notice. “We are good, like this. Partners. Friends. Close in all things.”

“If I thought that’s what you truly wanted, I’d happily agree,” Silver says, ruthless in his calm. “Or even that it was best. Or safest. But it isn’t, and I’ll be damned if I watch you suffer needlessly for even one more day.” He leans up, in, just the last few inches, and captures Flint’s mouth.

They’ve kissed twice before. Once a quick, sharp thing, after the battle, when Flint had been fairly sure he was dying of his head wound. He hadn’t wanted to pass into the great beyond without at least one kiss. And once when Silver had agreed to ship out with him, careful and chaste, just a quick brush of lips that might almost have been friendly.

This kiss is nothing like that. Silver won’t let it be, and Flint is powerless against him, finally conquered. Silver’s mouth is soft, and clever, and coaxing, and Flint should have known, he should have expected this. His hands are in Silver’s hair, pulling the ribbon free, sinking into the dark, thick waves of it and tilting Silver’s head just so. So he can get a better angle. So he can taste his fill.

“Bossy,” Silver breathes against his kiss and Flint tastes his smile, licks inside to experience that wicked, magical mouth. Silver’s tongue isn’t shy, touching and playing with his, tangling over and over and only parting when they gasp for air, just to dive back in. 

A muffled shout from above and a soft lurch through the deck under their feet pulls them apart for a moment. Flint stares. Silver is a vision. Lips red and wet, eyes blown black, and that hair, tumbled all around his face. “They’re tacking,” Flint murmurs, nonsense words to let him drink this moment in a little longer. “With the wind.”

“Good to know,” Silver smiles at him, slow and sly, and every bit of blood in Flint’s body rushes south. 

“I should--”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Silver’s hand cups the back of his head, palm brushing the stiff prickle of his short-shorn hair, while the other slides down his side, over his hip bone and between his legs. Flint huffs a shocked, hard breath and tosses his head back. It’s been so long since any hand but his own has touched him there, and the pleasure is sharp and sudden as a cramp.

“That’s better,” Silver hums, and Flint has lost his words, and possibly his mind, but he can at least wrestle them the two feet to the tiny, spartan bunk suspended on the back wall, Silver laughing at him the whole time.

“You shit. Stop laughing,” he growls, hands tangled in Silver’s shirt as he lowers him to the bed a little less gently than he could, but Silver’s eyes spark up at him, unrepentant.

“Get down here and make me,” he goads, and that’s past more than enough. James Flint, for the first time in too long to remember, lets himself go. He’s out of his shirt without even realizing it, and falling on Silver like a ravenous man before a feast. Fuck appearances, fuck the future. He can have this now, goddammit, and he will have it, he must.

“You can,” Silver breathes against his throat, where he’s been sucking kisses as James gets him out of his trousers, and James would be embarrassed that he’s been saying this shit out loud if he had the brainpower to spare on such trivialities. 

When they’re finally bare, the lush slide of skin on skin steals his breath. He runs his hands up the insides of Silver’s arms to his hands, pressing them up to the bed on either side of his head, marveling at the contrast; his own pale, freckled, scarred hands against the copper-silk darkness of Silver. With a surge he’s hovering over Silver, face to face, hips slotted together so that when he rolls his down, the catch and drag of their cocks rubbing together is like a benediction. Silver watches him, silent, panting, eyes wide and marveling, so open and hiding nothing. 

“God,” James grits out. “Goddammit. John Silver. John.” 

“Yes?”

“Fuck.”

“Please?”

He has to kiss him then, to shut him up, to swallow some of the pleased smugness that’s radiating off Silver in nearly tangible waves now that he’s gotten his way, and Silver meets him kiss for kiss. He slings his half-leg up over James’s hip, pulling him in closer even as he presses his palms against James’, twines their fingers together, their hands clasped above his own head as their hips find a rhythm older than time. It’s just sweat and their own slickness easing the way, no time or will for anything else, not now, when the dam has finally broken, but it’s perfect just how it is. Primal. James bites John’s lip, hard, then moves down to his chin, his throat, and when John makes that throaty growl he comes, liquid molten pleasure firing through his spine and hips.

“Fuck!” Silver’s loud, he’s always loud, and now he’s selfish in his hunt for pleasure, hips bucking up into the mess James made on their bellies, eyes half-closed and seeing nothing, James is sure. He untangles one hand, gets it down between them, and as soon as his fingers close around the rigid, hot length of Silver’s cock, he’s coming, just like that, with a shout, and they crumple down together onto the bed, folded together as closely as one body.

Eventually, James has to move. He’s breathing Silver’s hair, and some has found its way into his mouth, as well. He has to spit twice to get rid of it all, and Silver’s eyes are mocking him as he watches the whole production.

“Shut up,” he grumbles when he’s finally disentangled himself. He doesn’t quite get up off the bed, though, and tucks the wildest curls back behind Silver’s ear. Runs the back of his hand over Silver’s jaw, his cheek, down to the sweet, soft spot in the hollow of his throat. There’s a dizzy, uncertain happiness bubbling up inside him. He can do this. He is allowed. His touch is welcome here.

“I didn’t say a word,” Silver protests, and rolls up to one elbow, his own free hand finding a home in the curve over James’ hip. “Don’t you even think of going on deck. I heard you give the order. You’re mine until seven bells.”

“Well, that’s terrifying,” James admits, but he cannot stop smiling. He cannot. And when Silver tugs him back down, for more of those drugging, sweet kisses, he goes easily and without complaint.

*  
“So it really doesn’t bother you?” James has been curious since their chat with Rackham, but with one thing and another, it just hasn’t come up. Now, on a new day, a storm bank to their east that’ll need careful navigation, and Silver standing at his side, he can’t help but ask. “That there’s some unbelievable asshole out there, using your name, claiming to be you?”

“Why should it?” SIlver lifts one shoulder, the absolute picture of unconcern. If it shoves him a little harder into his space under James’ arm, so much the better, but James doesn’t acknowledge it. James has been grandly ignoring the grins and winks and nods of his entire crew for nearly a full day already; it wouldn’t do to encourage Silver any further. “He’s some great, tall, balding fellow, I hear. And he’s got no leg at all. And it isn’t even the same leg, from what Jack has heard. Anyone who knows anything about Long John Silver will know it’s not me the moment they meet him. And anyone else? Fuck them, I don’t care.”

“I suppose that’s that, then. Jack says he’s a very capable cook, though. I don’t suppose you’d like to try defending your honor in that field, now that we’ve fresh supplies on board from the _Vainglorious_?”

“No!” Chorus no less than four voices of the crew, busy around them on the deck, to varying degrees appalled and horrified depending on how much of Silver’s cooking they’d endured on the _Walrus_ and the warship. Silver bristles up like a cat with indignation, and James starts laughing so hard he has to bend over, brace himself on his knees. 

“I’ll have your arses for this in tomorrow’s Goings On, you vile shits, you traitorous cunts, every one of you a turncoat. After I’d slaved in that galley for hours, and with Randall, no less? This is the thanks I get, the loyalty you show me? We’ll see how long this lasts, my lads, you mark my words--”

James is laughing too hard to listen further. Under his feet, his ship rises up, bright and dancing, to meet him, kissed by the sea and the sun, and carrying them on to parts unknown.


End file.
